CHAOS raises $510M on $4.5B valuation; Series D led by Valor Equity Partners; Antonio Gracias to join board
When it rains, it pours...
This week has been one for the books at Ensemble.
Just a day after Groww went public in the most successful Indian tech IPO of the year, another milestone hit the news wire:
CHAOS Industries — Ensemble's Series B investment in frontier radar infrastructure — has closed a $510M Series D led by Valor Equity Partners, with participation from 8VC and Accel. The round values the company at $4.5 billion, up dramatically from its last mark just four months ago. Valor’s Antonio Gracias, longtime Tesla director, will join the CHAOS board.
Founded in 2022, CHAOS is building Coherent Distributed Networks (CDN) — multi-static radar systems that detect autonomous threats faster and with greater precision than anything on the market. Their technology provides an edge not just in warfighting, but across border protection, commercial aerospace, and critical infrastructure.
The company has now raised over $1 billion in total since its founding three years ago, with this latest round following a $275 million Series C just four months prior. The new funding will accelerate product development and manufacturing capacity.
Why the Series D matters
- Ensemble backed CHAOS at the Series B, enabled by pattern recognition developed over years of investing in government-oriented hardware/software platforms (ICON, Saronic).
- With the acquisition of Ziva Corporation, CHAOS now offers full-node synchronization wirelessly — meaning faster detection, broader coverage, and increased resilience across the network.
- Recent deployments include the ASTRIA system at Eglin Air Force Base, supported by multiple DoD funding programs.
- The company now has over $1B in total funding, a team of leaders from Silicon Valley and the defense establishment, and a rapidly growing contract base.
CEO John Tenet, co-founder of Epirus and son of former CIA Director George Tenet (now executive chairman), is building a new kind of defense prime, defined by speed, vertical integration, and a willingness to rethink everything from radar physics to software procurement. Discussing the deal, Tenet said the company expected to announce "a dozen contracts" in the coming months.
Ensemble's whirlwind week
We can’t control how markets behave — but we can control how we execute. At Ensemble, we stay grounded in the data, accountable to outcomes, and focused on backing the strongest teams in the world. Every day, we refine the way we source, underwrite, and support founders. And moments like this remind us why: because we believe it’s possible to build a venture firm completely focused on increasing the slope of innovation.
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